


Work in Progress

by Mary Reed (Mary_Reed)



Series: Juno Steel and the Be Gay Do Crimes Squad (Feat. RITA) [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Am I going to apologize for it? No, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Violence, M/M, Rita loves Juno, This will have a happy ending and I will finish this one I SWEAR, am I projecting onto Juno? yes, tw canon typical depictions of depression, tw child abuse, tw disordered eating, tw suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-01-06 02:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18379028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_Reed/pseuds/Mary%20Reed
Summary: Juno has been on Buddy and Vespa’s ship for three weeks now, and they’ve been…eventful.Rita, predictably, gets on like a house on fire with every last one of them. Buddy and Vespa find her exasperatedly endearing, Jet listens to her rants about streams and cybersecurity with equally rapt attention, and Peter… Well, Peter gets along with everyone, doesn’t he?Juno's the one who doesn't fit, and slowing down means that the stress of everything with Theia and O'Flaherty finally has a chance to catch up with him. Juno's never had the best timing, has he?





	1. Corn Chips

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna finish this one you guys I promise. 
> 
> More specific trigger warnings in the end notes

It’s three days before he starts noticing himself doing it.

 

Juno has been on Buddy and Vespa’s ship for three weeks now, and they’ve been…eventful. 

Rita, predictably, gets on like a house on fire with every last one of them. Buddy and Vespa find her exasperatedly endearing, Jet listens to her rants about streams and cybersecurity with equally rapt attention, and Peter… Well, Peter gets along with everyone, doesn’t he? 

His name here is Jude Lovelace, and Lovelace is surprisingly like Peter Nureyev. Rita calls him “Mistah Glass-slash-Lovelace-slash-whatevah,” despite his chuckled insistence that she simply call him Jude. It only takes an hour for Juno to figure out that Peter has a long history with Buddy and Vespa, one which spans multiple aliases, multiple names. Vespa makes a passing effort at calling him Lovelace, but Buddy calls him Pal with the kind of spiteful glee that suggests it’s a nickname he wasn’t fond of when she came up with it. Jet doesn’t talk much, but when he addresses Nureyev it’s as Lovelace, and with the respect one master of a craft has for another. Juno is the only one who seems to struggle to find some way to address him, and he solves that problem by avoiding addressing him at all.

Peter is more himself than Juno’s ever seen him outside of a Martian tomb (birth chamber, whatever). He _fits,_ with these people, and so does Rita. Juno is the sore thumb, and he’s all but resigned himself to being uncomfortable and spending most of his time hiding in his tiny room, going back over every inch of the O’Flaherty case like he can change the past if he just tries hard enough, when they’re all summoned to the rec room for a job. Rita calls it their “first real heist as a big crime family, ooo isn’t that exciting, aren’t you excited boss?” And for a group that just came together one week ago, it goes off without a hitch. Rita hacks some cameras, Peter talks his way into about three different rooms as, somehow, four different personas, and Juno only takes one hit for every three he gives before they make their escape. 

In the Ruby7 on their way back, Juno nurses a bloody nose with his off hand and tries to wrap his other arm around his (probably cracked) ribs without also jostling his (probably broken) dominant hand. Hey, one out of three is good, but in this case it’s also 9 out of 27, so, you know. Vespa is driving so Peter can secure the piece they stole, which leaves Juno in the uncomfortable position of sharing a backseat with the man he left in the middle of the night, whose fake name seems to have been temporarily knocked out of his head along with his nose’s structural integrity. 

Vespa hits a bump and Juno winces at the jolt to his hand, which jostles his ribs, which causes him to bump his nose, at which point he prepares to release a truly impressive string of curses when he hears soft chuckling to his right. “What the hell are you laughing at, Nur- Gl- whatever the hell I’m supposed to call you?” He looks to Vespa for help, but she’s split her attention between the comm in her ear (through which Juno can hear Rita chattering away) and the road. 

“It’s Jude Lovelace, Juno, and come now, was that not a little laughable?” He can’t quite seem to wipe the smirk off his face, even with the careful distance he maintains between the two of them. 

“It’s less funny when you’re the one bleeding all over the car, _Lovelace_.” It’s meant to be biting, but Juno’s nose is still pinched shut so it comes out closer to “Lub-less,” at which point Peter breaks down into full on giggles. Juno tries to stay offended, he really does, but soon he’s laughing right along with, the sound punctuated with winces and curses as the motion messes with his ribs and makes them laugh even harder. In the front seat, unbeknownst to the two of them, Vespa smiles. 

Peter and Juno haven’t really talked since then, but the tension that thickened the air in any room they shared has lessened considerably. Juno hasn’t apologized, and Peter hasn’t asked, and perhaps it’s not the healthiest solution but there’s not exactly room for the kind of knock-down drag-out fight they both know is waiting in the wings on a spaceship this small. They work together on jobs with the kind of seamless precision that comes from trusting someone with your life, if not your heart. They share the coffee pot in the morning and pleasantries at night when they encounter each other in the kitchen at ungodly hours and they watch streams in the rec room with Rita placed carefully between them.

It’s not good, but it’s ok. It’s more than Juno deserves, and he’s happy enough to accept the little nods and the sly smiles and the way that Peter relaxes into himself here even with Juno’s empty side of the hotel room bed lingering between them. 

 

He’s comfortable, God help him, so it’s three days before he starts to notice his old habits creeping up on him again.

 

It begins with a box of fruit snacks. 

 

“Look boss, they brought back these delicious fruit snacks for us! They’re _just_ like the ones from _Lovecraftian Love on Mars_ , when the lead falls in love with her ex-wife’s evil twin, but she…” Rita devolves into recounting the last 18 seasons of her stream, and Juno doesn’t even notice himself pulling a couple packets from the box and pocketing them. He opens one and eats a few, ignoring the ever-present knot in his stomach telling him that eating is for people with more time and fewer flaws. 

Every time he passes the box in the kitchen, he grabs one and carries it around for awhile, and every time he ends up tossing it on his bed or throwing it into his top nightstand drawer (already packed with two laser pistols and a shitty plasma cutter because he’s nothing if not always armed). And if he ends up grabbing a nutrient bar or two every once in awhile, well the cargo hold is literally full of them, so it’s not a big deal. 

Three days after the arrival of the massive fruit snacks crate, Juno gasps awake from a nightmare of flashing tentacles and Nurueyev’s screams. He’s jittery and drenched in sweat, sleep a mile off, and he decides a drink of water might do him some good (he’d prefer a shot, but Rita locked him out of the ship’s liquor drawer on day 1 and has stalwartly refused to budge since). 

Creeping down the cold corridor and into the kitchen, Juno pulls a glass down and fills it with water. He opens the pantry compartment on habit more than anything else, fiddling idly with the assortment of snacks and juice boxes which were all requests made enthusiastically by Rita. Downing his water and haphazardly tossing the cup into the ship’s dishwasher, Juno turns to leave, prepared to spend the next four hours brooding in the dark. 

“I thought I was the only thief here, detective,” comes a smooth voice from the darkened corner of the kitchen. Juno startles at the sound, flinching backwards into the galley table and knocking over several chairs. His hands clench with the burst of adrenaline, and a juice packet he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding bursts in his fingers. 

Suddenly he can’t breathe, his chest tight and his vision tunneling. He didn’t mean to smuggle out food, didn’t mean to make a mess, and he can’t quite remember why it’s so important that no one find out. A figure towers over him, menacing and shrouded in dark, and he knows Sarah Steel is dead, has been for decades, but he finds himself reaching for a body to shield on pure instinct. 

“Juno, are you alright?” asks the figure, and it sounds nothing like his mother but it is no less featured in his nightmares. The presence of Peter Nureyev jolts Juno partway back to the present, and he digs his nails into his palm hard enough to leave half-moon cuts to get the rest of the way there. 

“I’m fine, thanks,” Juno grunts out. He struggles to his feet, whole body still trembling, feet slipping on the juice dripping from his right hand. Peter reaches out a hand to help him up, and Juno flinches. 

“Juno-“ starts Nureyev, but Juno’s heard that tone before. He knows what it means; _Juno, do you really think I would hurt you? Juno, are you that pathetic?_ It’s Diamond’s voice, at the beginning, before they decided that hitting Juno was easier than dealing with his bullshit. Not that he could blame them. It’s the sound of someone pitying him; it’s the sound of someone one step away from deciding he’s not worth the space he takes up in their life. 

 

He runs for the door.

 

Back in his bunk, Juno locks his door and sinks onto the floor in front of his nightstand. He hadn’t noticed he was ferreting away food again, how hadn’t he noticed? The first time after Ben that he’d done it, Rita was the one to notice. She kept leaving extra bags of her snacks around the office, bringing in new flavors and insisting that Juno “had to try ‘em, boss, this one’s Uranian mushroom flavored and it only changed my color vision for like ten minutes, totally worth it.” One day Juno came back to the office from a case to find Rita holding ten bags of sim-corn chips with a disapproving look on her face. 

“Mistah Steel, have you been stealing my special import Super Flavor Blasted Corn Chips?” she asked. Juno’s mouth had gone dry, feeling trapped and panicked with his mother’s voice echoing loudly in his ears. He knew the blood must’ve drained from his face, because Rita had said, “Mistah Steel? You ok, boss?” He’d nodded shakily, bracing himself on the doorframe. 

“You know Mistah Steel, you can always have some of my snacks, no problem for old Rita, my mom always said ‘Rita, what’s yours belongs to the people you care about, too,’ and she used to use that as an excuse to borrow my hair ties, cause they really were more fashionable than hers, but I still think the lesson stands…” She’d gone on like that for several more minutes, letting Juno get his bearings back, and then he’d gone into his office and it was business as usual. After that, Rita never tried to ask him why he responded the way he did, but he kept finding bags of her chips hidden around the office and in various desk drawers (and one time, memorably, in the Martian ficus she’d insisted they add to “spruce up the office, boss”). 

Rita is Rita; it’s way past too late for Juno to hide all the ways he’s fucked up from her, but it isn’t too late with this crew. Sitting in the dark of his bunk, he resolves to try harder, but when he opens up his nightstand to empty it of snacks, he can’t quite make himself do it. 

 

He falls asleep next to the bed, staring at his stash of food and willing himself to be different. 


	2. Scrambled Eggs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno remembers Rita talking about trauma once while she was watching a stream in the office. 
> 
> She’d said that while people often had flashbacks where they thought they were back where they’d been hurt, often times they had emotional flashbacks instead. A return to the feelings they had felt, without the associated memories. 
> 
> Sometimes Juno saw the ghost of Sarah Steel haunting his footsteps, felt Benten’s blood, wet and sticky and cold on his hands (too late, again, always, whispered the treacherous parts of his mind). But more often than not, he felt a twisting in his gut when the world was still. He felt anxious in spaces where the day before he’d felt safe, felt rage and fear and despair without pretext or cause. 
> 
> It had been happening more lately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY CHECK IT OUT I ACTUALLY UPDATED! You guys I'm improving. 
> 
> This picks up right where the last chapter leaves off, but engages with a different aspect of that good good childhood trauma. As always, more specific trigger warnings are listed in the end notes, and as always let me know if there's something I've missed!

Juno remembers Rita talking about trauma once while she was watching a stream in the office. 

 

It had been a bad week, Juno snapping at Rita and turning away clients and drowning himself in liquor no matter how many times Rita hid his flask. He felt anxiety creeping down his neck, feeling off kilter with the implication that Rita knew something was going on with him. Back then, before Nureyev and the Theia and his pseudo-reunion with Benten, Juno only knew one way to deal with someone offering their help, even in such an off-handed way; he got mean. He can’t remember what he’d said, now, and he’s sure Rita’s forgotten too, but he’ll never forget how she got quiet, and then softly told him about a stream where a character who’d been hurt as a child was experiencing emotional flashbacks. She’d said that while people often had flashbacks where they thought they were back where they’d been hurt, often times they had these emotional flashbacks instead. A return to the feelings they had felt, without the associated memories. Then, she’d stopped talking and let Juno go drink himself to an afternoon nap, but the lesson stuck with him. 

Sometimes Juno saw the ghost of Sarah Steel haunting his footsteps, felt Benten’s blood, wet and sticky and _cold_ on his hands ( _too late, again, always_ whispered the treacherous parts of his mind). But more often than not, he felt a twisting in his gut when the world was still. He felt anxious in spaces where the day before he’d felt safe, felt rage and fear and despair without pretext or cause. 

 

It had been happening more lately. 

 

It was what triggered him so badly the night before, what had him swiping food and then refusing to eat anything for days on end. It’s what’s making him want Nureyev to hate him for what he’d done, despite his promise to Ben and Rita and himself that he was going to be kinder, starting with himself.  

He’s trying, he really is, but his brain won’t stop telling him that he’s a fuck up, that he should be ready for the next blow because it’s coming, and it’s coming from someone who says they love him. That he should provoke it, so at least he’ll know when to brace for the punch or the slap or the cutting words.

Juno wanders into the kitchen the next morning looking…truly awful, if he’s being honest. Buddy is seated at the table, Vespa nestled in her lap while they both read something on her comms, and both very kindly ignore the general dishevelment of their resident former detective. Tossing a nod and a friendly grunt in their direction, Juno heads for the fridge and studiously avoids looking at the pantry cabinet. Eggs, maybe, he thinks. He thought he’d seen some last time Jet made dinner.  

He’s reaching for the carton when he hears feather light footsteps behind him. Juno mechanically continues making scrambled eggs, but he isn’t surprised when Nureyev floats into his peripheral.  

“Good morning, detective.” Nureyev’s voice is smooth and unruffled. Juno wishes he could relate. 

“Morning,” he mumbles in response. The two silently assemble their respective breakfasts, Juno toasting some bread between stirs and Nureyev mixing something yogurt-adjacent with some kind of violently magenta granola that looks like something out of Rita’s favorite show. Actually, when he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure that granola is _exactly_ the kind from Rita’s favorite show. He’ll have to ask her about that. 

Lost in thought as he is, Juno almost misses Nureyev inching imperceptibly in his direction. He keeps his eyes on his neon breakfast and pitches his voice low, but his tone is more strained than Juno’s heard it since he arrived on the ship. He’s sincere when he starts talking, voice heavy with it, and that, Juno thinks, is probably the worst thing about the whole interaction. 

“Juno, I wanted to talk about last night-”

“I’m fine, Nur- Lovelace. It was nothing, so just drop it, ok?” Juno snaps back. Nureyev looks suspicious, and below that Juno could swear he looks concerned, but he lets the subject go with a nod of his head. He tries not to be disappointed by that, tamping down the thought that he would’ve liked it if Nureyev hadn’t bought his bullshit. 

The toaster pops and Juno flinches, _hard_. The spatula in his right hand nearly misses Nureyev’s head, and the pan he had been steadying with his left lands on first his forearm, and then the floor. “ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses. An ugly red welt is already rising across his arm, and the scrambled eggs are scattered across the floor. 

“Here Juno, let me-” Nureyev reaches out so slowly to help pick up the eggs, and suddenly Juno just can’t take it anymore. The kindness in his tone and the way he’s so careful not to enter Juno’s space without telegraphing it first, the way he doesn’t seem to hate Juno the way he should; Juno wants to wipe it all away. He wants Nureyev to understand that he is not something you love, that he should hate Juno with every fiber of his being. He wants Nureyev to realize he is something bad and wrong, so he can get the hurting over with already. 

“Back _off_ , I can take care of it myself just fine,” he snaps. “Goddammit, you don’t need to be the knight in shining armor every time I fuck up. I can clean up some fucking eggs without help, thanks.” Nureyev immediately backs off, eyes shuttering off a flash of something like hurt. 

“My apologies, dear detective. I didn’t mean to offend.” His tone is all Rex Glass, smooth and placating and absolutely impenetrable. “I certainly don’t doubt that you are capable of taking care of yourself.” It’s biting and meant to hurt, and suddenly Juno feels both relaxed and disappointed. _There it is_ , he thinks. _Now he understands_. He tells himself it’s a good thing, that what Nureyev feels now is nothing compared to what he would feel down the line if he kept trying to find someone worth saving in Juno. He still feels like shit. 

Nureyev takes his granola and walks lightly out of the room, past Vespa and Buddy who are both studiously not looking in Juno’s direction, their comms unit still buzzing away.  

He gets to work cleaning up the eggs, hands shaking so hard he can barely get the pan off the floor and into the sink. He scrapes the remnants of his breakfast off the tile and dumps them in the garbage along with the toast he’d been making, ignoring the questioning looks from Buddy and Vespa. He couldn’t make himself eat if he tried, and he wasn’t very hungry to begin with. 

“When are you planning on eating, darling?” asks Buddy.  

“Later,” Juno practically snarls in response. He turns on his heel and storms out the door, directly into a short ball of wild curls and salmon puffs. 

“Aaah!” Rita and Juno shriek in tandem. 

“God, Rita, warn a lady next time!” 

“Mistah Steel, _you_ ran into _me_!” She pauses the stream running on her comms and glares at him. 

“Yeah, well, watch where you’re going instead of walking around the halls with your face in your stupid comms,” he snaps. Rita steps back, looking hurt, and Juno’s gut twists. He said he wasn’t going to do this anymore. _Goddammit_ , he was going to be kinder. Guilt snakes through him.

“Rita, I’m really sorry. That…that wasn’t called for.” He rubs his face with his unburned hand. “I’ll go get you some more snacks, okay?” He starts to turn back towards the kitchen door when Rita puts a gentle hand on his arm.  

“Mistah Steel, what are you doing?” asks Rita, and it’s softer than she usually is. 

“What do you mean, Rita?” Juno sighs. 

“I know you’re having a bad time, but you gotta work on dealing with it better.”

“Rita-” 

“No, I know what you’re about to say, boss,” she interjects. “I’ve worked with you for too long, you know? You’re gonna say you’re sorry, and that you’re a terrible person, and somethin’ somethin’ ‘I’m gonna go hide and refuse to let anyone be nice to me now.’ I remember what you get like, but you’ve been workin’ so hard to be better. I’d hate to see that go out the window because some pretty not-secret-agent with soft hands won’t be mean to you.” Juno blushes furiously at that. “We can all see that you’re strugglin’, boss, and before you do that thing where you mope and run to your room, that wasn’t an insult.” She looks at Juno sternly. “You gotta let us help you. We’re your big crime family now.”

“Maybe you’re right, Rita.” 

“You bet I am, Mistah Steel.” She grins at him, bouncing on her toes. “Now don’t think I haven’t noticed that burn on your arm, ‘cause I definitely have and if you think we’re not getting that taken care of right now you got another thing comin’ Mistah Steel. I just finished _True Tales of the OR_ two weeks ago, and some other poor lady just like you left a third-degree burn untreated for two whole years, can you believe that? Two years, I don’t know how she put up with it honestly, it’s gotta be just so annoying. Anyway, she finally goes in to the emergency room, and what do you know…” Juno lets Rita lead him towards the infirmary, enjoying the calming buzz of Rita synopsizing some wildly inaccurate medical drama. 

 

Maybe he doesn’t deserve these people, but he’s got ‘em, and dammit he’s going to try to be the kind of person they think he is. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: denying oneself food, intense feelings of anxiety, burns, alcohol abuse, canon typical mentions of child abuse, blood mention. Drop me a line if you think I missed one. 
> 
> Your comments and kudos inspire me to write more and better tales. Feel free to come yell at me on tumblr at Rosemarysmomma. I just finished Monster's Reflection and so I am Ready to Suffer.


	3. Sandwiches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter has a nightmare. Juno makes a sandwich. Trauma's kind of a bitch sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the summary, and the length, this chapter was like pulling teeth. Enjoy?
> 
> As always, extended trigger warnings in the end notes.

Juno’s having a staring contest with a sim-turkey sandwich when the smell of that cologne slams into him. His whole body tenses, but it’s three in the goddamn morning and he’s too tired for this shit, so he resolves to just ignore the tall, attractive problem until it goes away.  

That is, until he notices the lack of footsteps moving behind him, and the sound of ragged breathing floating in from the hall. 

“N-Lovelace, are you okay?” After several seconds with no response, he turns and walks towards the hall outside the kitchen. 

Nureyev is standing in the dim emergency lights of the ship hallway, staring into the middle distance with his hands faintly twitching. He does not seem to have noticed Juno, but he keeps flinching away from nothing Juno can see. It’s almost like he’s dodging something-

Oh, _shit_. Juno knows what this is; he’s been having them for weeks (for months, for years, since Jack Takano waltzed into his life and _took_ ). 

Nureyev is standing in the hallway, twitching from the phantom memory of electricity coursing through his veins, flinching away from tentacles that vanished with every other part of Miasma. 

“Nureyev?” he asks tentatively. He knows he probably shouldn’t be throwing his real name around, but there’s no one awake to hear it right now, and he’s afraid the alias would shatter the fragility of the moment. 

Peter looks…lost, for a moment. He stares at Juno as if he can’t really see him, or perhaps as if he’s trying to puzzle out who Juno is. “Juno?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Uh…how’re you doing?” _God_ , Juno doesn’t know how to do this. He’s never been on this side of it before. 

Nureyev raises one flawless eyebrow at Juno, incredulous despite his distressed state. To be fair, it was a _really_ dumb question. 

“Okay, fair point,” he huffs. 

“Juno, I…” he trails off, catching one twitching hand with the other. He looks down at them both like they’ve personally offended him, and that’s how Juno knows that Peter is coming back to himself. 

“Miasma?” The name sends a shiver through Peter, and it feels thick and wrong on Juno’s tongue, like blood and sweat and _pain and focus goddammit Steel_.

“I-yes,” Nureyev concedes with a sigh. 

“I have nightmares about it too.” He wants to say more, wants to make sure Peter knows he doesn’t think he had it worse, that Juno just got a couple of dumb headaches while Miasma _tortured_ Nureyev because Juno wasn’t good enough, _again_ … but he doesn’t. Because this is not about him. This is about Peter, and what he needs right now. 

So he shuts up, thinks about what he might want in this moment, thinks about what he knows about Nureyev, and makes a move. 

“Do you want- can I touch you?” He blurts it out, and Nureyev startles at the sound enough to snap out of the mask he was rapidly schooling his expression into. For a moment he hesitates, and Juno thinks he’s going to let Rex Glass take over and make some thinly disguised innuendo. But he doesn’t. 

“Yes, Juno,” he responds quietly. Before he can lose his nerve, Juno crosses the three steps between them and wraps his arms around Peter’s torso. The smell of him is intoxicating, and being this close _aches_ in a way Juno wasn’t expecting. But it’s worth it when he feels Peter relax, his shoulders slumping and his chin coming to rest on the top of Juno’s head. He exhales, and it’s shakier than Juno’s ever heard it outside of Miasma’s tomb. 

He counts it as a win. 

After a few moments, when Juno feels Nureyev start to lean gently away, he quickly unlatches and takes a step backwards. 

“I, umm, I hope that helped,” he says lamely. Nureyev smiles. 

“It certainly did. Thank you, Juno.” Despite Juno’s hope, Nureyev’s eyes definitely watch the flush that runs across his cheeks and down his neck, and the grin turns mischievous on the edges. 

“Yeah, well, you know. It’s the least I could do, considering.” He shrugs. “Do you…wanna talk about it?” Fuck, if anything is gonna motivate him to read that book about coping with trauma Rita’s been badgering him about for ages it’s this hovertrain wreck of a conversation. 

“No, dear Juno. I think I’ll head back to bed now. I feel rather prepared for a night of sleeping soundly, thanks to you.” It's the most himself he's sounded around Juno since that hotel room. It hurts, in the way that only the things we truly love can. 

“Well-good. That’s good.” By this point Juno’s entire face is heated, so he turns and makes a speedy (if ungraceful) exit down the hall. Peter chuckles behind him. 

Back in the dim lights of the ship’s kitchen, Juno hesitates, and then takes a bite of his sandwich. It feels like sawdust in his mouth, and his stomach turns at the taste of any food on his tongue, but he swallows it. He gets three more bites down before he has to call it quits. It’s three more than yesterday. 

He thinks he feels proud as he clambers back into bed and shuts his eye. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for: disordered eating habits, flashbacks typical of PTSD, nightmares, canon-typical Juno Steel self-deprecation, torture
> 
> Remember kids, sometimes helping other people through their trauma can be helpful for your own, but only if it's done in a way that doesn't prioritize someone else's health over yours.


	4. Herbal Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno has a nightmare. Vespa reveals a habit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is totally not autobiographical, and I definitely never called a friend in a panic because I dreamed he had hurt himself and was convinced it had actually happened, that would be ridiculous. 
> 
> As always, more specific trigger warnings are in the endnotes. I'll warn you up here that the added tag for nonconsensual observation is specifically about the ship having cameras installed in common spaces, which they all know about but which several characters do use to watch characters who are not explicitly aware they are being observed. I know that can be triggering for some people, so I wanted to warn up here at the top.

“I told you, Miasma, me _first_ ,” Nureyev snarls, and his knives are a blur but so are Miasma’s tentacles, just a millisecond faster, and she’s got him by the throat. There’s a sickening crack and he looks all wrong and-

No. That isn’t how this ends. Nureyev’s breath accelerates and roughens, but it doesn’t stop. Miasma is fast, but she’s never faster than Peter’s hands, never gets herself around him before Juno can shoot her. 

That isn’t how this ends, but Nureyev is laying there, still and oddly bent and Miasma’s laugh is in the air and in his head and he’s screaming, sobbing with it because _how will he ever get the chance to tell Peter he’s sorry, he’s so sorry_ and he hasn’t left him in that hotel room yet and he left him over a year ago and _no no no no_ -

Juno wakes with a choked sob. For a moment the walls are glowing with old Martian runes, and he reaches blindly for Nureyev’s arm to warn him or wake him or _something_ \- 

Then he remembers where he is, and lets his arm fall back to the bed. He’s on Buddy and Vespa’s ship, in his bunk, and Nureyev is three doors down, probably sleeping soundly. 

_Nureyev is three doors down, sleeping soundly._

_Nureyev is three doors down…_

_Nureyev is three doors down?_

No matter how many times he repeats it in his head, or mutters it into the echoing quiet of his room, it doesn’t seem to land right. He knows Nureyev is fine, and here, that he didn’t die on Mars by Miasma’s hand (or tentacle, or whatever). But his bones sing with a certainty that he’s wrong, that Nureyev is dead and he should be hunting down Miasma or begging a gravestone for forgiveness or _something_.

Finally, he can’t take it anymore. He’s itching with panic and frustration at his inability to trust his own brain. With a growl he throws off his threadbare sheets and stomps out his door. 

He creeps down the hallway, lingering panic offsetting the chill of the metal floor on his bare feet. He knows where Nureyev’s room is, and he can’t go in, but he can stand outside, can try to hear his breathing through the door. He needs to know that Nureyev is alive, and breathing, and not broken and dead and _still_ on the floor of that Martian chamber. If he had been a better person, if he had stuck around like he wanted to back then, he would’ve been able to hold Peter, to wake up to those sharp eyes and those soft hands. 

But that isn’t how this ended either. 

Nureyev’s light is off, and from down the hall he hears Nureyev’s dulcet tones, followed by Buddy’s smooth alto. So Nureyev’s in the kitchen, with Buddy. He thinks about going in, but he knows he must look every inch the level of panicked and groggy that he is. Facing Nureyev when he can barely string two thoughts together through the fog and anxiety is unthinkable, so he resolves to head back to bed and brood until daylight. He knows the thief is safe and alive and here. He _knows_. Though he can hear their voices, part of him is still caught on the image of Peter’s neck at that odd angle, his eyes frozen open, his hands unnaturally still…

Suddenly he remembers part of the tour Buddy gave him and Rita when they first arrived. 

_“This is the comms/engine room; she’s not a big ship, so we had to combine some things,” Buddy had said with a smirk. “And here is our set of security camera feeds. Before you ask: no, they’re not in your rooms, just common spaces; and yes, we are required to keep them on. We had an…incident with a rather violent stowaway who took advantage of our lack of surveillance measures, just a few years before we lost…” Buddy had trailed off then._

_“That’s a very unflattering presentation of our first meeting, Buddy dearest,” Nureyev had cut in smoothly. His tone had been light and teasing, and Buddy had laughed and moved on looking lighter, but Juno had seen the hard set to his eyes. He knew that look. Nureyev knew exactly what he was doing when he pulled Buddy out of her memories, and dammit if it hadn’t hurt to watch him do that for someone else._

He tiptoes his way to the comms/engine room, and only gets lost once before he finally makes it. He feels weird about using cameras to spy on Nureyev, especially since he could just walk into the kitchen and see for himself, but the feeling is far overshadowed by the growing certainty that he was wrong before and Nureyev is long dead, cooling on the stone of a Martain ruin. 

As it turns out, he shouldn’t have worried about anyone thinking he was creepy. The chair closest to the equipment is already taken, a short shock of green hair poking above the headrest. Vespa does not acknowledge his presence, eyes locked forward. 

For perhaps the first time in his life, Juno chooses to be quiet. He slides into the seat next to hers and looks for Nureyev’s long, graceful frame amongst the pixelated black and white. He finds him in the same frame as Buddy, heating up a kettle on the stove, and stalwartly does not make eye contact with Vespa. For several minutes, neither of them breaks the silence. 

“Sometimes, it’s hard to tell if she’s real.” Vespa is blunt as she breaks the silence, nearly apathetic. “But I only hallucinate in person, never on screen. So seeing her on the video feed lets me know she’s real.” She hasn’t looked at him, eyes glued to the top left screen. The silence weighs, and maybe it’s because he’s exhausted, or because he hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks, or maybe even because here, in the dark, everything feels suspended; whatever the reason, Juno finds himself opening his mouth. 

“N-Lovelace and I…we almost died, the second time we worked together. We were-“ he chokes on the memories for a second, Nureyev flipping card after card while Juno tries to remember how to breathe through the pain and the panic and the _screams_. “It was bad. Sometimes I dream that- that he didn’t make it. And I know he did, but…” he trails off and wipes angrily at the tears running unbidden down his cheeks. 

“But you need to know for sure.” 

“Yeah.” Nureyev is leaning against the counter as the kettle boils, gesticulating grandly through some story while Buddy doubles over with laughter. His hands never once fall still, gesturing broadly and pantomiming what Juno can only assume is either a complicated acrobatic move or some kind of sex act. Slowly, the knot in his chest loosens, and the soft glow of the monitors makes his eyes feel heavy. 

He jumps at a hand on his arm, which is quickly removed. He’s not sure how much time has passed, but he is leaning fully on the chair’s armrest, and above him Vespa’s hand is outstretched uncertainly near his shoulder. 

“You should get some rest, Steel,” she says gruffly. Juno nods and rubs at his eyes. 

“That’s probably a good idea.” He’s out of the chair and moving towards the door, Vespa an awkward step behind him, when she reaches out and rests her hand on his shoulder again. 

“Steel, whatever happened with you and Lovelace…You might try talking to him.” She’s avoiding eye contact, and her tone is uncharacteristically uncertain, but her hand on his shoulder is solid. 

“Vespa, it’s complicated-”

“More complicated than thinking he was dead for 10 years, only to find him broken and half insane and-” it’s Vespa’s turn to falter on a memory, and Juno holds his tongue as she collects herself. She scowls, bites her cheek, and takes a deep breath. 

“He’s _here_. _Now_. Don’t fuck it up because you’re afraid of owning up to the shit you did in the past.” She pats his shoulder and then, having seemingly reached her limit on heartfelt emotion, shoves roughly past him and out the door. 

Juno stands there for a moment, considering Vespa’s words. He takes one last look at the monitor, where Nureyev has settled at the table with a gently steaming mug, and then turns and heads back towards his bunk. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for characters being watched via cameras, canon-typical violence, nightmares, and use of the word 'insane' to describe mental illness

**Author's Note:**

> Mentions of canonical domestic and child abuse, disordered eating habits which in this chapter includes hoarding food, allusions to suicidal ideation without specific plans, nightmares (non-graphic), slight self-harm
> 
> Further installations of this fic will include depictions of panic attacks, more disordered eating, and more suicidal ideation which will be tagged more specifically chapter by chapter. I don't want any of you to be triggered, so if there's something I missed please let me know. 


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